


sometimes punishment is the true crime

by betteroffbad



Category: Prestuplenie i nakazanie | Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 12:47:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18410954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betteroffbad/pseuds/betteroffbad
Summary: this time you are going to get it right. you (the reader) go to the world of crime and punishment (Constance Garnett Translation) to stop Raskolnikov from killing anyone using the power of love and envelopes full of money.





	sometimes punishment is the true crime

THIS TIME YOU WILL GET IT RIGHT. This time you do your hair in the mirror  
before leaving your own time. You've bought tinted glasses  
maybe a decade or so out of date, but Raskolnikov won't notice 

You meet him in a student cafe in Petersburg, in the nice part  
of Petersburg, not the posh part, but the clean part  
where the wooden floors are polished white with sand  
and the students who were well-off in childhood and will soon be well-off again  
wear their fashionable brokeness like easy battered jackets or careless hats  
They are speaking in English of course because you are reading the translation

Raskolnikov is listening with his mind on something else  
His eyes are gleaming like opals  
He is not yet really poor, still broke, still hopeful  
his jacket brushed, his clothes still nearly clean  
Long-boned and sharp-shadowed like an icon he is more beautiful that you could have imagined  
even though technically you are imagining it right now

Your plan is very clear in your mind.  
You are going to make friends with Raskolnikov and possibly more  
You are going to pose as a very intelligent bohemian intellectual to make everything easier  
You will buy him a nice apartment with three separate rooms and a washbasin  
and send 4000 dollars or rubles to his mother and sister to help with their problems  
You will buy back the books he sold to the pawnbroker  
along with the rings and watch and whatever else  
and you will buy him two whole silver cigarette cases  
each one made of real silver instead of a block of wood  
so that he can pawn them for real if he ever gets into trouble again. 

You have worked out every detail using a book of prices for Russia in the 1870s  
You have checked into the nicest hotel in the city which unfortunately still has bedbugs  
the past being what it is. It's important that you don't mess anything up.  
You sit down between Raskolnikov and some other guy  
and the other guy immediately puts his arm around your waist  
which is your cue to look beseechingly at Raskolnikov  
and say, "As a highly educated [YOUR GENDER] of this modern age  
I believe I should choose whom I love and it's not you, buddy"  
and then sort of loop your head around on the neck to change  
from disdain (non-player rando) to desire (Raskolnikov)  
and invite the latter to dinner or something more intimate

Unfortunately, Raskolnikov seems to take this amiss.  
Do you need money? he says Don't try to get it like this.  
I've got plenty of money. Do you need a place to stay? 

Apparently you remind him of his sister  
who has had no end of trouble with her lecherous employer  
and maybe he's feeling guilty about his own feelings  
toward prostitutes or old women or who knows what all  
No no, you explain, I'm not turning tricks  
I just like you. You seem nice. Do you want to have dinner?  
He says, Are you hungry? I'll buy you dinner. The other guys all laugh.  
Rodya, they groan, you couldn't buy a cat dinner.  
That money's for winter clothes and books and rent  
And it's not yours. You pawned half your own things to get it.

Sweetheart, my child, don't let him bluster  
You want to be a modern intelligens?  
Just sit down by me, and we'll hash it out bluntly  
in the style of Cherneshevsky, and stand you a drink  
We never see anything as nicely turned out  
In these rough parts, as you are, so give us a kiss

I don't. CARE. about YOU, you almost shout  
I don't want to talk about your stupid ideas.  
He's the one that I want. I'm actually quite wealthy.  
I want to start a magazine, and I want him to write for it.  
The rest of you are children. I've been following your work,  
you add in a rush of breath, though you're not sure if that's possible.

They laugh. One student stomps his feet, transported by mirth.  
Follow us? How? Did you rifle through our rubbish?  
And Rodya? they howl. Why, he's smart, but a flake!

Never mind how, you say, I have my ways. 

Raskolikov naturally thinks you're making fun of him  
He tries to look cool, but you can see it on his nervous bony face  
It's backfired a little, but you can still bring it back  
All you have to do is prove that you're serious

I've been hired by a person, you say, a certain influential person,  
a highly respected Russian literary person  
Your ideas are too dangerous for this influential person  
to openly avow just yet, but he thinks you're the man of the future  
I've had some work done, I'll admit - there's been snooping  
He wanted to find out the truth of the matter  
And now that he's satisfied you can be trusted  
to shake up the bourgies and so on, you're hired!  
Censorship is no worry. My man pulls the strings  
You're to write what you want, and he'll make sure it's read  
And you'll be compensated - cash advance and all  
We don't ask much of you. You can finish your studies  
We'll send a good bundle to your mother and sister  
(forgive the intrusion - I also despise it  
But it was necessary, you see, for the future)  
And I'll be your sympathetic yet hard-headed typist. It's not a bad deal!  
But it's only for you. 

The boys at the cafe still think its a joke  
For a minute you think, it's too much. He won't buy it  
But luckily under the show of disbelief  
is a tiny seed of egotism just waiting to be tickled  
into sprouting. Deep down, he knows  
it _should_ be true. That it never has before  
was an error that ought to have been corrected long ago. 

In the end, it was easier than you thought it might be. You give him your card  
which you had printed back in the real world, in the present  
It looks slightly wrong for this era, too thin and too slick  
with a font that hasn't been invented yet  
in English, of course, because this is the translation  
the Constance Garnett translation which everyone says is the worst  
but you read it when you were fourteen and now everything else sounds wrong

Raskolnikov's not going to notice.  
He's never been to the future  
He's never even been to Europe  
The next day he skips two morning lectures  
and shows up at your hotel, wearing  
the slightly better-condition past version of his famous stovetop hat  
and a jacket too short for his long knobby arms  
Your heart goes out to him as you watch him halt in the lobby, uncertain  
deep-shadowed and serious, needing a haircut  
his nervous shoulders moving defensively up and down

You give him two envelopes full of period-appropriate money  
one for his studies and his future labors for your made-up magazine  
one for his sister and his mother back in the provincial town of whatsitsname  
You give him a new coat which you brought with you in your suitcase from the present  
It's not as sturdy as a coat from his own time but it's easier to clean  
and he promises to send you his essay in one week  
on the Napoleonic personality and the nature of greatness  
just exactly what your mysterious benefactor wanted to hear about in fact  
He takes both your hands in his nervous pale hands and kisses them  
and crumples his new coat with infuriating carelessness as he bounds away to his new well-lighted flat

Of course he doesn't get back to you in a week  
he doesn't get back to you in two weeks or three or four  
you start to worry that something has gone wrong and show up at his door  
He's sweaty and manic just like he was in the book before  
Something is wrong, he says, something is terribly wrong  
You have to tell me what's wrong, he says, things like this don't just happen  
Am I mixed up in something terrible? What are you hiding? 

and in fact something has gone wrong, but only in the future  
in the future of murder you are trying to keep him from  
and you are hiding everything from him because the truth is ridiculous  
but you're not sure if explaining it would make him hate you or not  
so you say, yes, but it's not bad. I only want to help you.  
There's no mysterious publisher. It was really just me all along  
I've loved you for a long time and I wanted to help you. 

But who are you? he says. Loved me how? From where?  
His stupid teary big icon eyes are so pitiful you have to tell the truth  
even if it isn't the whole truth. In the future,  
You tell him, you're famous. I'm from the future.  
He listens. He sort of half-tries to understand.  
You can see on his face that he's trying to listen  
but he'd really prefer to be thinking about other things  
You can see the invisible sinews of plot structure tug and slacken  
at his mind which is not really a mind at all  
at his nervous too-thin carefully composed limbs  
and his bones which are really thick lines of ink, his newspaper skin  
He's trying to work out what exactly this changes  
if it's everything or what  
if you're crazy or what

You said you were going to see this one through  
but you're already getting pretty tired of Raskolnikov  
Just don't kill anyone, ok? Just whatever you do, no matter what happens  
don't kill anyone, with an axe or a knife  
or anything else, or your hands, for any reason  
Don't run anyone over with a car or a horse  
or a train, or a boat, or tie anyone to a bear  
or push anyone off a cliff, you say. Just don't do it. That's my advice  
to you from the future. 

He says, that's not very specific advice.  
Shouldn't someone from the future give better advice?

Just take it, you say. 

Weirdly, he does. 

He takes your third envelope full of cash  
and spends it on clothes and tablets and pens for his studies  
He sits the exam, which he fails, but eventually  
takes on a job of translation from his friend whatshisname  
and translates 8 French novels in a strained, facetious style  
He starts but doesn't finish a book of verse  
and a pamphlet on educational reform, in which every other paragraph  
alludes to the modern virtues that made him fail his exam  
He does all right. He doesn't fall in love with you  
because, not having killed anyone, he doesn't need redemption  
but he dedicates one of his pamphlets to [YOUR NAME]  
and introduces you to his mother and sister when they visit

Everything is basically ok after that.  
The pawnbroker's sister instead of getting murdered  
Has her baby, a pudgy blonde boy, for whom you feel responsible  
Luckily she doesn't ask why or question anything about you  
You offer to take him on afternoons in the stroller  
and on summer nights by the banks of the river  
you feel all right about how this one turned out  
you don't know what happened to the Marmeladovs but they're probably no worse off than usual  
you lose touch with Raskolnikov but you're pretty sure he's fine now  
The baby grabs your hair if you lean in close  
or puts his whole hand in his mouth and makes a spitting sound  
There are thousands of people in Petersburg who are doing slightly better or slightly worse  
just going about their lives not wondering what went awry or when  
or why they're all speaking English  
any more than they would have anyway


End file.
